1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a control method therefor, and a storage medium, and, more particularly, to an image forming apparatus for permitting image formation in accordance with image attributes and the like, a control method therefor, and a storage medium.
2. Related Background Art
As computer networks are becoming popular, high-quality image information can be obtained via the networks. This poses social problems such as protection of the copyright on image information.
To solve such problems, a transmitting source transmits image information including charging information to a user, or a user sends back charging information to the transmitting source in accordance with the use frequency of image information. Image information including charging information can only be printed by dedicated software or a dedicated printer, and is protected from being illegally copied. That is, the user can print only a predetermined number of images permitted in accordance with a charge, and is inhibited from printing more than the predetermined number of images from the original data.
When only a predetermined number of images can be printed, as described above, an image forming apparatus must reliably output them. Particularly for a color image, the image forming apparatus must output the highest-quality image regarding the image quality such as the density and tint.
Generally, to maintain high image quality, internal states such as the remaining amount of developing agent and the remaining life of an exchangeable component that may influence images must be guaranteed satisfactorily normal. In normal use, however, these strict requirements degrade the usability. For example, even if the remaining toner is little, images can be printed with quality to a certain degree (so as to discriminate the images). In general, this state is called a warning state in which control for limiting print action is not performed. In this case, the image quality maintenance conditions are always checked. If any condition is satisfied during continuous print, print action stops.
In this manner, when only a limited number of images can be printed, and print action stops during the operation owing to functional deterioration in internal states which may influence images, the user usability greatly degrades.